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The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

Growing Strong For Two Years
What has happened in the two years since SoftLayer joined forces with IBM? In a word: growth. Growth in several areas was spotlighted by 451 Research report. The article noted that SoftLayer is “no longer just an IaaS offer, but the foundation on which IBM is building strategic products. IBM Bluemix PaaS, data services and multiple SaaS offerings all run atop SoftLayer infrastructure.”

Welcome to The IBM Family
We’re excited to welcome Compose into our growing IBM brood. The acquisition was announced last week, but what does it bring the IBM family? Fortune highlights the company’s ability to “attract a new flock of web and mobile developers” to IBM, while offering up “lightweight database services based on MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, RethinkDB and other databases.”

We’re Happy to Work With You
Core insurance technology software and IT services provider, Majesco, chose the IBM Cloud platform for its entire suite of property and casualty insurance software products to customers in a public cloud. In a write-up by IBR, Majesco’s COO Ed Ossie said, “Working with IBM will help insurers transform their business with a modern core solution that can be deployed on a proven and tested environment.”

A Chip Off The Old Block
IBM has designed the world’s smallest chip with the help of GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung. Squint a bit and you might be able to see the 7 nm (yes, that’s a nanometer) chip that is the future of microprocessing.

In a statement, IBM called this new technology “crucial to meeting the anticipated demands of future cloud computing and Big Data systems, cognitive computing, mobile products, and other emerging technologies.”

Yesterday, we announced a new pricing model that provides customers with even more visibility and control over cloud infrastructure costs.

While other cloud providers advertise “low” prices for incomplete solutions, they neglect to mention extra charges for essential resources like network bandwidth, primary system storage, and support.

At SoftLayer, our servers already include these necessary resources at no additional charge. That’s because we want to provide our customers with unmatched value and the best performance for price, which makes it easier to see actual costs of cloud solutions and budget accordingly.

Our new pricing model includes a redeveloped ordering and provisioning system that offers even more granular pricing for every SoftLayer bare metal and virtual server, from the processor to the RAM, storage, networking, security, and more.

With this new pricing announcement, we’re also introducing new configuration options for bare metal servers, including increased RAM—up to 3TB—and two new SSD drive options—960GB and 1.2TB.

To fully understand the benefits of our new pricing model, let’s take a look at the example below for an Intel Dual Xeon E5-2620 (4U) server.

You can see that our new pricing saves customers ordering this server $1,780 (or 39 percent) over the old pricing model.

Additionally, as part of yesterday's announcement, we’re launching new pricing for services based on data center location. Location-based pricing displays unique pricing for each data center and removes flat- and percentage-based surcharges, giving customers even more price transparency.

You can learn more about SoftLayer’s pricing philosophy on our website.

This guest blog post is written by Alexia Emmanoulopoulou, marketing manager at Canonical.

With OpenStack, cloud computing becomes easily accessible to everyone. It tears down financial barriers to cloud deployments and tackles the fear of lock-in. One of the main benefits of OpenStack is the fact that it is open source and supported by a wide ecosystem, with contributions from more than 200 companies, including Canonical and IBM. Users can change service providers and hardware at any time, and compared to other clouds using virtualization technology, OpenStack can double server utilization to as much as 85 percent. This means that an OpenStack cloud is economical and delivers more flexibility, scalability, and agility to businesses. The challenge however lies in recruiting and retaining OpenStack experts, who are in high demand, making it hard for companies to deploy OpenStack on time and on budget. But BootStack, Canonical’s managed cloud product solved that problem by offering all the benefits of a private cloud without any of the pain of day-to-day infrastructure management.

Addressing the Challenge of Finding OpenStack Experts

Resourcing an OpenStack six-strong team to work 24x7 would cost between $900,000 and $1.5 million and can take months of headhunting. Thus the savings that OpenStack should bring companies are eroded so Canonical created BootStack, short for Build, Operate, and Optionally Transfer. It’s a new service for setting up and operating an OpenStack cloud, in both on-premises and hosted environments, and it gives users the option of taking over the management of your cloud in the future.

After working with each customer to define their requirements and specify the right cloud infrastructure for their business, Canonical’s experienced engineering and support team builds and manages the entire cloud infrastructure of the customer, including Ubuntu OpenStack, the underlying hypervisor, and deployment onto hosted or on-premises hardware. As a result, users get all the benefits of a private cloud without any of the pain of day-to-day infrastructure management. For added protection, BootStack is backed by a clear SLA that covers cloud availability at the user’s desired scale as well as uptime and responsiveness metrics.

Choosing Between On-premises and Hosted Cloud

Some companies prefer to host on-premises because they feel more secure knowing their cloud is running on their own site. However, when things go wrong, some companies find they don’t have the expertise on-hand to quickly recover. Furthermore, on-site hosting is at least three times as expensive as it is to outsource to a hosting specialist.

With the hosted option for BootStack, your OpenStack cloud will be hosted on Ubuntu-certified hardware in SoftLayer data centers. SoftLayer provides customizable bare metal and virtual servers run on the highest performing cloud infrastructure available. Users can seamlessly move data between servers at no cost and benefit from secure, fast, and low-latency communications between data centers. 24x7 expert staff in each data center can troubleshoot any rare issues that can’t be directly resolved through their self-service management portal. Canonical and SoftLayer also take care of patches and upgrades to both the operating system and OpenStack, hardware and software failure prevention and fix, proactive health monitoring of the cloud and hardware, and resolution of any other problems.

No Lock-In and Predictable Cost

The two features that set BootStack apart from other managed cloud products are the predictable cost structure and the lack of lock-in. With BootStack, users can access every tool and every machine, any time. A company can choose to take over the management of its cloud at any time, at which point it will receive training and support from Canonical to ensure a smooth transition. BootStack customers can then choose to either bring their cloud in-house or continue hosting with SoftLayer.

In terms of costs, BootStack cloud is priced at $15 per day per server, plus the cost of the hosting. SoftLayer offers a number of bare metal servers that exceed the OpenStack recommended configuration, starting at $699 per month. You pay as you go, and can scale as your business needs change.

All-in-all, it’s a flexible managed cloud at a predictable cost with expert staff to manage it until you’re ready to take over!

If you’ve been following along at home (and we hope you have been), you’re probably well-versed in SoftLayer and Cloudant’s free Big Data Academy, the (free) webinar and workshop series designed to teach you all about deploying big data workloads in the cloud, optimizing your infrastructure environment, and capitalizing on the value of your data. (Did we mention it’s free?)

Did you enjoy these Big Data Academy webinars? Well, get offline and follow them to Europe! The Big Data Academy is trekking across the continent this summer, with free in-person workshops in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Paris, and Helsinki throughout June and July. Register now and max out that summer vacation with a European workshop. (Bonus: All workshop participants will receive a special offer up to $1,250 per month for six months on SoftLayer.)

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

We've got the power
What makes an existing partnership better? More power, of course. IBM and SAP strengthened the bond by adding a new set of integrated Power Systems solutions for SAP HANA in-memory computer applications: POWER8 servers. Welcome to a new era of high speed, high volume data processing.

Straight from the horse’s mouth
On the subject of IBM’s cloudy future, Forbes sat down with none other than Robert LeBlanc, SVP of IBM’s Cloud Business, to clear the haze. Ambition, AWS envy, and giving up on the public cloud? It’s all there.

Friending Facebook
If your company could target the right folks on Facebook, would it be interested? That’s what IBM’s latest ad partnership with the social network is all about. A write-up in Fast Company provides all the details behind the cooperative, which is aimed to "more accurately identify which of [a company’s] customers are among the 1.44 billion people active on Facebook.” After all, learning to leverage the social web just makes sense.

We’re so happy for you
When big things happen for our customers, we love to highlight them. Longtime IBM business partner Manhattan Associates chose IBM Cloud as a preferred cloud provider for its clients (which includes tech support for those running their applications on SoftLayer). And Distribution Central is now offering its 1,000 resellers access to AWS, Azure and IBM Cloud’s SoftLayer cloud services through a single interface. Way to go, everyone.

No autographs, please!
Oh, and it’s come to our attention that we were mentioned on the latest episode of HBO’s Silicon Valley. Although the scenario in which we were mentioned wasn't quite factually accurate, being famous looks good on us, if we do say so ourselves. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to inquire into our star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

Q1
A recent study deemed SoftLayer the top-mentioned hosting provider for cloud services among 50 percent of IT decision makers. This news comes on the heels of IBM’s first quarter earnings report, announcing a 75 percent increase in cloud revenue (with yearly revenue at $7.7 billion). Forbes explains IBM’s rise to power over the competition in “Move Over Amazon, IBM Can Also Claim Top Spot In Cloud Services.” Additionally, Mark Jones, SoftLayer’s chief technology officer, gave details to CRN on how IBM expects to stay on top of the cloud competition by offering pricing benefits over its market-leading rivals.

Building Applications in the Cloud with SoftLayer
For those who enjoy broadcast over print, our lead technology evangelist, Phil Jackson, sat down with Jacob Goldstein of Wireframes to discuss how to choose the right servers for your needs. Listen to the podcast.

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

The Battle for Global Market Share
Warmer weather must be around the corner—or it could just be the cloud industry heating up. How will cloud providers profit as more and more providers push for world domination? The Economist predicts an industry change as prices drop.

The U.S. Army Goes Hybrid
The U.S. Army is hoping to see a 50 percent cost savings by utilizing IBM cloud services and products. Like many customers, the Army opted for a hybrid solution for security, flexibility, and ease of scale. Read more about what IBM Cloud and SoftLayer are doing for the U.S Army and other U.S. government departments.

The Only Constant is Change
Or so said Heraclitus of Ephesus. And to keep up with the changing times, IBM has reinvented itself over and over again to stay relevant and successful. This interesting read discusses why big corporations just aren't what they used to be, what major factors have transformed the IT industry over the last couple of decades, and how IBM has been leading the change, time-after-time.

The week in review. All the IBM Cloud and SoftLayer headlines in one place.

Welcome to the Masters
If you’re not practicing your swing this weekend, you’re watching the Masters. Over the next couple of days, professional golfers will seek their shot at landing the coveted Green Jacket. And while everyone might be watching the leaderboard, IBM will be hard at work in what they are calling the “bunker,” located in a small green building at the Augusta National Golf Club.

And for those that can’t line the greens to watch your favorite player, IBM is utilizing the lasers the Golf Club has placed around the course to track the ball as it flies from hole-to-hole. Learn more about the golf-ball tracking technology here.

Open Happiness
In a move to streamline tech operations and cut costs, Coca-Cola Amatil is partnering with IBM Cloud to move some of its platforms to SoftLayer data centers in Sydney and Melbourne—a deal sure to open happiness.

"The move to SoftLayer will provide us with a game-changing level of flexibility, resiliency and reliability to ramp up and down capacity as needed. It will also remove the need for large expenditure on IT infrastructure." - Barry Simpson, CIO, Coca-Cola Amatil

Read more about the new CCA cloud environment and the five-year, multimillion-dollar deal.

Bloomberg sits down with Bob Picciano, IBM Analytics Senior VP, and David Kenny, The Weather Company CEO to discuss what makes this different than other companies that have analyzed the weather in the past. Using Watson Analytics and the Internet of Things, the partnership will transform business decision-making based on weather behavior. Read how IBM’s $3 billion investment in the Internet of Things will collect weather data from 100,000 weather stations around the world and turn it into meaningful data for business owners.

New SoftLayer Storage Offerings
Last week, SoftLayer announced the launch of block storage and file storage complete with Endurance- and Performance-class tiers. The media was fast to report the new offerings that provide customers more choice, flexibility, and control for their storage needs and workloads.

“Twitter provides a powerful new lens through which to look at the world. This partnership, drawing on IBM’s leading cloud-based analytics platform, will help clients enrich business decisions with an entirely new class of data. This is the latest example of how IBM is reimaging work.” – Ginni Romety, IBM Chairman, President and CEO

Last week, an estimated 21,000 IBMers, SLayers, customers and partners from around the world flooded Las Vegas, Nev. to attend the first-ever IBM InterConnect. This new conference combined three popular IBM conferences (Impact, Innovate and Pulse) into a single, premier cloud and mobile techno-topia.

What our engineers and developers did in Las Vegas after conference hours might have stayed in Las Vegas, but IBM’s InterConnect hits and announcements didn’t. Here’s a recap:

Speed to Market Wins the Cloud Computing Race
Everyone likes to go fast, and the new senior vice president for IBM Cloud, Robert LeBlanc, likes to go super-fast. “What I’m focusing on is speed,” LeBlanc says.

In this blink-and-the-market-changes world, time-to-market determines the winners and losers in cloud computing. Part of LeBlanc’s strategy is opening new SoftLayer datacenters. If you haven’t heard the news, SoftLayer will be launching Sydney and Montreal data centers in the next 30 days — with more coming soon. Stay tuned for more locations.

Cloudy skies on the horizon—that’s a good thing!
Our CEO, Ginni Rometty, announced a $4 billion investment on cloud services (shared with the data analytics and mobile businesses). She’s hoping that the investment will spur $40 billion a year in revenue come 2018.

In fact, hybrid was a big theme at InterConnect. “We are going to make all those clouds act like one,” says Angel Diaz, vice president of IBM cloud technologies. IBM cloud (powered by SoftLayer) will be a one-stop shop: a cloud superstore with a smorgasbord of aaS offerings.

It looks like it’ll be an exciting ride for IBM over the next couple of years. Make sure to keep up with the headlines for more announcements in the coming months.